2015 Annual Meeting – Frenchman Bay Partners

Minutes of the Frenchman Bay Partners Annual Meeting

May 2, 2015

College of the Atlantic Gates Center

For more detail contact the Community Environmental Health Laboratory at cehl@mdibl.org

Present

Duncan Bailey (MDI Biological Laboratory)
Martha Bell (Island Heritage Trust)
Antonio Blasi (Hancock County Planning Commission)
Jenn Booher (Artist)
Roger Bowen (Town of Gouldsboro)
Savannah Bryant (College of the Atlantic)
Jock Crothers (Waukeag Neck Oyster)
Marina Cucuzza (College of the Atlantic)
Anastasia Czarnecki (College of the Atlantic)
Fiona de Koning (Acadia Aqua Farm)
Bob DeForrest (Maine Coast Heritage Trust)
Jane Disney (MDI Biological Laboratory)
Anna Farrell (Maine Conservation Corps/MDI Biological Laboratory)
Jennifer Fortier (City of Ellsworth)
Emma Fox (University of Maine)
Michael Good (Downeast Nature Tours)
Brad Haskell (Eastern Maine Community College)
Emily Hollyday (College of the Atlantic)
Paola Idrovo (College of the Atlantic)
Emma Kimball (College of the Atlantic)
Carol Korty (Town of Lamoine)
Anne LaBossier (Lamoine Conservation Commission)
Larry Libby (Lamoine Conservation Commission)
Bridie McGreavy (University of Maine)
Abe Miller-Rushing (Acadia National Park)
Madeline Motley (College of the Atlantic)
Diane Nicholls (Town of Lamoine)
Jim Norris (Frenchman Bay Regional Shellfish Committee)
Chris Petersen (College of the Atlantic)
Tyler Prest (College of the Atlantic)
Tyler Quiring (University of Maine)
Amanda Quiring (University of Maine)
Sean Smith (University of Maine
Liam Torrey (College of the Atlantic)
Terry Towne (Maine Coast Heritage Trust)
Mark Whiting (Maine DEP)
Hannah Webber (Schoodic Institute)

9-9:30 am Introductions and Goals and Objectives

Chris Petersen gave a short orientation
Bridie McGreavy and Jane Disney
- Goals and objectives are to:
  - Provide project updates
  - Have conversations that matter: talk and brainstorm, move towards action, come away with specific steps. Build capacity for action related to CAP.
  - Involve new people, and encourage people to find their niche.
- What is the World Café?
  - Conversations structured around specific questions.
  - Connect, learn, and plan together.
  - Particular type of listening.
  - Share insights.
  - Roles: hosts, artists, question keepers, harvesters.
- Agenda overview
- Short introductions around the room

9:30-9:35 Meeting Dedication to Barbara Arter

9:35- 10:05 Flash Talks Round I Partnership Successes

Working the Tides: Building Partnerships in Frenchman Bay (Bridie McGreavy)
- Define problems, plan actions, pursue strategies, produce solutions, share learning.
- “A living plan”
- Mission of the Frenchman Bay Partners: to ensure that the Frenchman Bay area is ecologically, economically, and socially healthy and resilient in the face of future challenges.
- Metaphor of working the tides has guided work:
  - Conflict: rough seas. Conflicts and differences have been essential to progress we’ve made.
  - Specific processes: commitments that guide conflict to help us grow.
  - Check the tide charts: be mindful of what people need to participate in meetings. Also go out and check in with people: what’s their perspective?
  - Creating swirls: creating spaces of interaction where people can come together. Drawn from tidal action.
  - Actively navigate: using maps, software.
  - Keep coming back:
    - Diverse leadership within the group.
    - Harness conflict through humility.
  - Mudflat successes
    - Goal of opening 610 acres of restricted clam flats
    - How? Water quality issues (DMR, DEP, Department of Agriculture), social issues (Partners).
    - Economic report on value of mudflats.
    - Maine Community Foundation
      - The 610 Project
      - The Green Crab Control Project
    - Prioritize areas: abundance, access, problem forms.
    - Improved communication: access to information, websites, working the tides.
    - Fishermen’s Forum: “The part I like to see is that this has really formed a longstanding relationship and collaboration.”-DMR
    - Next steps and opportunities:
      - Coordination across groups.
      - Clam seeding experiments.
      - Signage for dog waste awareness.
      - Watershed management in NE Creek.
    - Eelgrass Research and Restoration in Frenchman Bay, a Collaborative and Community Effort (Jane Disney)
      - What is going on with eelgrass?
        
        Documentation, trying to understand eelgrass loss, restoring eelgrass, testing restoration methods, sharing our processes state wide (ME-NH working group, Casco Bay, Deer Isle Stonington).
      - Aerial maps showing decline.
      - Understanding the loss:
        
        Changing water quality? Impact of the invasive green crab?
        
        Crabs: genetics, abundance.
        
        No correlations.
      - Agreements with mussel harvesters
    - Diadromous Fish (Chris Petersen)
      - What is good for anadromous fish?
        
        Clean water
        
        Connectivity of streams, ponds, and oceans
        
        Sustainable harvests
      - Work over the last year:
        
        River herring
        
        Volunteer surveys around Frenchman
        
        Somes-Meynell Sanctuary, COA, DMR, Town of Sullivan.
        
        100-fold increase in 9 years of work.
        
        Goal is a good enough system to allow for harvesting.
        
        Smelt is an emerging group
        
        Downeast Salmon Federation
        
        2014 survey around Frenchman Bay available online soon.
        
        ANP survey on smelt.
        
        Maine Stream Habitat Viewer: make your own map; layers you can click on and off.
        
        Stream connectivity studies and culvert work.
        
        Highlighted partners
        
        Help us count!
        
        Citizen science—getting people out to count
      - Benthic Habitats (Anna Farrell)
        
        Baseline data in upper Frenchman Bay
        
        Procter Survey and historical data
        
        Procter Survey revisited
        
        Eddie Monat archives
        
        Plans for collaboration with BatesCollege

10:05-10:35 World Café Breakout Session I

Purpose: have the conversation you want and need to have
Four groups: eelgrass, diadromous fishes, mudflats, benthic habitats
Round 1:
- What interests you most about this topic?
- How do you see yourself getting involved?
Round 2:
- Who else could help us move forward?
- What else do you think we need to know or do to advance our work?
Hosts:
- Bridie McGreavy
- Jane Disney
- Chris Petersen
- Anna Farrell

11:15-11:45 Flash Talks Round II Emerging Opportunities

Looking Down the Road: the Future of Frenchman Bay (Jane Disney)
- What will it take to move forward?
  - Additional, different partners
  - New tools
  - Coordination, collaboration, communication
- ESV decision support tool
  - Who needs to be at the table?
- Constellation model of collaborative social change
  - What’s our relationship to each other?
  - How groups have organized around our conservation targets.
  - Incorporate other complexities.
  - Considering our relationship like this helps us expand our partnership and explore new areas.
- Frenchman Bay Partners website
- Coast Walk (Jenn Booher)
  - Walking the coastline of MDI
  - Curious about things she sees. Explores the forces of the shoreline.
  - Intersections with all the pieces she picks up—people they’re tied to, places they came from.
  - Invites people to walk with her
    - Hike, talk, interview
  - Historical records
  - Process:
    - Mapping the walk.
    - Getting permission from landowners.
    - Find a time that matches tides, schedules, weather, etc.
    - Research in advance.
    - Photo editing, transcribing audio interviews, answer questions that came up, creature identification.
    - Blog post.
  - Open ended gathering of information.
  - Sharing information with everyone who’s interested.
  - Blog posts, data on Anecdata, hopefully a book in the future.
  - Welcomes people to join her.
- Anecdata.org (Duncan Bailey)
  - Track anything of interest.
  - Makes it easy to get information.
    - Variety of ways export data and information from Anecdata.
- NEST (New England Sustainability Consortium
  - Water Quality (Emma Fox)
    - Water quality
    - Surveys for coastal management processes.
    - Support existing work in coastal management.
    - Work together with the FBP:
      - Data is important to FBP interests and goals.
    - Collaboration opportunity: how can we use this information to address bay-wide health?
- Downeast Drainage (Sean Smith)
  - Landscapes and how they adjust to humans and climate.
  - Runoff, erosion, nutrients, point and non-point sources.
  - Precipitation to runoff, high point to low point.
  - Landscape characterization, mechanical processes moving through them.
  - Cromwell Brook watershed
  - Questions:
    - Places that have most common bacteria pollution problems
    - Coastal conditions that contribute to high bacteria
    - Climate’s role
  - Source, delivery, and residence time of pollutants.
  - Modeling

11:45-12:15 World Café Breakout Session II

Questions:
- What interests you most about this topic?
- How do we identify current or emerging community needs around the bay? What other issues related to this topic should we be thinking about?
- How do we enhance collaborations to respond to community interests and needs?
- Who else do you know that could help us move forward?
Hosts:
- Sean Smith and Emma Fox
- Jane Disney
- Duncan Bailey
- Jenn Booher

12:15-1:00 pm Lunch break

1:00-2:00 pm Discussion: Who to Involve? What Next?

Who to get involved?
- Planning Boards
  - If you have shoreline, a town is required to have a planning board or permitting process. Must have ordinances.
- Schools
  - NOAA B-WET grant submitted by Partners last fall
- Harbor committee
- Public—land use
- Town Council
- Protected area folks
- Local historical societies
- Commercial
  - Lobster pounds
  - Wormers
  - Clammers
- Facebook and Social Media
- Businesses
  - Real estate developers
  - Shops
- Golf courses: Kebo and Bar Harbor
Statewide meeting
- Friends of Casco Bay
- Downeast Fisheries Partnership
- Local representatives
- Reach out to Senator Collins
Convince a lot of business people this is in their best interest.
- Governor, etc. are big business. They need to understand how degradation of marine resources is detrimental to the state.
- Messages about value of resource
- Business to business
- Chambers of Commerce
Video documentation of effort
Organizational stability of the Frenchman Bay Partners
- Coordinator
- Staffing
- Funding
- Statistician to grapple with data
Continue to pursue existing efforts
- Benthic habitats, diadromous fishes
Citizen science
- Catch-all Frenchman Bay Partners project on Anecdata

Follow up

Survey and minutes

What Next?

Bring back larger group: steering committee
Continue to improve communications between NEST, the Partner, Park, Bar Harbor (Cromwell)
May 24/25: mudflat seeding experiments with FBRSC
Eelgrass restoration, summer 2015
Diadromous fish events
Sustaining current efforts
How do we deal with issues? i.e. rockweed
- We’re not issue focused. We’re focused on habitats and species.
- We could tie them into habitats.
Educate ourselves, education not advocacy
What precedent will our decisions set?
Rockweed
Leader on benthic habitats?

Elections

Movement that current executive committee remain the same for two years. In the meantime, establish steering committee
- Seconded
- How to groom next iteration of leaders? Name specific people to cultivate.
Current Slate:
- President: Jane Disney
- Vice President: Chris Petersen
- Secretary: Bridie McGreavy
- Members at Large: Bob DeForrest, Fiona de Koning
Vote:
- All in favor of keeping current slate of officers: 19
- Nays: zero
- Abstentions: zero

2:00 pm Meeting Adjourned